Bare the Seed of the Fruit

In Chapter 5, page 26, Offred and Ofglen are waiting in line at the shops, coming across a pregnant Janine, “A woman who is pregnant doesn’t have to go out, doesn’t have to go shopping… She could stay at her house. And it’s dangerous for her to be out, there must be a Guardian standing outside the door, waiting for her. Now that she’s the carrier of life, she is closer to death and needs special security. Jealousy could get her, it’s happened before. She comes here to display herself. She’s glowing, rosy, she’s enjoying every minute of this.”

This section of the Handmaid’s Tale stuck out to me, due to the fact that being pregnant is a glorified subject within Gilead. Handmaids in Gilead serve one purpose: get pregnant and give birth. If you’re infertile in Gilead, you are marked as an “Unwomen” and will get sent into The Colonies, where they must work to clean up nuclear waste. So when it comes to being pregnant, you have to treat it like you’re walking around glass, a careful but dangerous process. The handmaids in Gilead always live in such fear of becoming infertile or “Unwomen,” due to the fact that they would be basically useless. Their main purpose is to hold and give life, and if they can’t do that, what is the point of them to stay in the systematic society then?

In the epigraph of The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood added a verse from Genesis 30:1-3. In Genesis 30:1, “And when Rachel saw that she bare Jacob no children, Rachel envied her sister and said unto Jacob, Give me children, or else I die.” This verse explains the sheer amount of biblical influence in The Handmaid’s Tale that relates to pregnancy. The main premise of this book is that verse: death and life. Jacob is being used as an object in this verse for Rachel. She craves to bear the life of a child, to fulfill a duty, the main duty of her life.

In my drawing, you can see that I drew what a typical handmaid would look like, but pregnant. I took this handmaid reference from the 2019 cover art for The Handmaid’s Tale, by Noma Bar (1). What I had in mind for this image was to tie in some biblical meaning behind this, by making the woman like the Virgin Mary and angelic-like. A reference I took for the Virgin Mary was a painting called the “Feast of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary” by Jerónimo Ezquerra (2). I didn’t necessarily add much heavy connection between my drawing and this painting due to the different complexities that each piece holds. However, to make my drawing more angelic-like, I added to what most angels or holy people in historical Christian and/or Catholic paintings had. Which were a gold, halo-like orb around their head to represent the light emitting off of them. A reference I took for adding a halo around the handmaid’s head was from a painting by Giotto di Bondone (3), “Crying Angel”.

(1) http://www.casualoptimist.com/blog/2017/12/08/notable-book-covers-of-2017/handmaids-tale-noma-bar/

(2) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jerónimo_Ezquerra_Visitation.jpg

(3) https://www.greatbigcanvas.com/view/passion-the-crucifixion-crying-angel-by-giotto-1304-1306-scrovegni-chapel-padua,2070500/